Thank You & Happy New Year 2022
வணக்கம், As we get to the end of our term in office, the current Executive Committee (EC) for the years 2020 & 2021 would like to thank all our General Body members, for giving us an opportunity to serve you. It was indeed great privilege and honor to serve our community. Despite the challenges due to COVID pandemic, our team was able to deliver both in person and virtual programs beneficial to our community. Here are some key highlights: With the mark of 50th year of our TAGDV Sangam, we decided to celebrate all the programs in 2020 as “Ponvizha” events. Celebration of the Grand Pongal event in 2020 was a unique event with decorations portraying Tamil Nativity, including set up of Village Tea and Sugar Cane juice stalls. The event was a sold-out in the history of TAGDV for a Pongal event. For the first time, we had organized a Mulaipari with 60+ members and the highlight was the active participation of our kids. We had an interactive session with Vijay TV anchor Mr. Gopinath and our members. Members were served lunch in a traditional banana leaf. As COVID hit we seamlessly made transformation in schools by switching to virtual learning and assessments. We negotiated with Microsoft saving several thousand dollars for our Tamil schools in MS Teams licensing for virtual classes. During the two years period Tamil schools in our region expanded to 4 schools and the enrollment was 550. This EC conducted fundraiser events to support the local community here in the US and our community back in Tamilnadu (Tamil Folk Artists), whose livelihood was badly affected during the pandemic. Our team was able to generate close to $10,000 dollars in funds within a short span of time and successfully distributed the funds. For the first time in TAGDV history, we were able to provide with 20+ virtual programs free of cost to our members. We also conducted workshops for middle schools and high school students to prepare them for success in high school and for college admissions respectively. Also, our team took critical steps to deal with protecting the privacy of students and our members. In response to GB feedback, in another first, all the EC members signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) on day 1 of office. We have implemented the same in all the TAGDV schools last year. All membership information is now secured in a new laptop that we had purchased this year and it will be handed over to the incoming EC team. The EC was able to work with the Board and set-up a Bylaw committee and the first amendment draft was sent to the GB for review in October. We are handing over the draft by-law to the incoming committee for follow-up. We also launched a campaign to publish a special Golden Jubilee Sangamam Magazine highlighting the historic aspects of TAGDV and key highlights in the past 50 years. All the articles, historic artifacts and photos that we [...]